october-2009

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS BY JR/AGENCE VU EXCEPT PAGE 73 BY CAROLINE ELUYEMI/CAMERA PRESS/RETNA AND
THIS PAGE (TOP RIGHT) BY ANDREW WINNING/REUTERS/LANDOV
later, he was done, running down an
alleyway before the police caught on.
Soon, documenting his friends wasn’t
enough. “Graffi ti was about the action,”
says JR. “As I began to paste bigger
pictures, I wanted more. And when I
began going to other cities, it became
about concept.”
PAPER TRAIL
Clockwise, Rio,
Paris, Cambodia
and Liberia.
Opposite and
below, trains
in Kenya
The fi rst concept was social unrest. He turned his lens
to the youth involved in the 2005 Paris riots, which led to
his fi rst complete project, 2006’s “Portrait of a Generation.”
As part of the exhibition, he pasted the photos around the
ghettos in Montfermeil and Clichy-sous-Bois, to the youths’
delight, and then wallpapered the wealthy arrondissements in
Paris, to the residents’ disgust.
After that he made “Face 2 Face,” photographing Israelis
and Palestinians who held the same jobs—actors, musicians,
hairdressers—and pasted their images together along
the West Bank and on shops in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and
Bethlehem. He wanted to see if people could tell the diff erence
between the two faces.
“I realized in the Middle East that there are places in the
world where people have no concept of art, especially the kind
you’d fi nd in the street,” says JR. “In Paris, people can walk
by street art and recognize it and put it in a frame. But in the
Middle East, the photos actually made people stop and ask
questions. And the discussion it creates is far stronger than
my message. That is the purpose of art.”
Whenever he goes into a community, JR sits down with
restaurant owners, businessmen and priests to explain his
project and get their blessing to paste on their walls. Even
so, it’s generally illegal. City offi cials consider JR’s work
vandalism, and they’re often confused when a business owner
charges up to defend him as they try to make an arrest.
Which is why when the media comes calling, he (usually)
lets his work do the talking. He prefers to be anonymous, so
much so that no one outside his circle of friends knows his
real name, he never attends his exhibitions (his assistant
Emile goes in his stead) and almost never grants interviews.
His intentions at the start of a project are simple: shoot
and paste. Occasionally, though, he gets much more
involved. After a few days of photographing the women
in Kenya, he pasted the roofs with vinyl pictures instead
of paper to protect the shoddy homes from rain. In Rio, he
turned an empty house into a community center for the
children (which he continues to finance) and rebuilt a home
for one of the favela’s poorest families by hiring local men
to do the job. Finally, when he finishes each project, he
creates a special-edition book of stories and photos for the
community he’s visited.
“JR goes to see these people to create something with them,”
says Berrebi. “There is no stage, no border. Whatever he
creates belongs to them.”
“They are so proud of their story,” says JR, fl ipping through
one of the oversize books. “They are the true owners of these
photos.”
RACHEL STURTZ, whose street art experience is limited to hopscotch
chalk drawings, is a writer living in New York City.